Lisa Brisse
Lisa Brisse is an Author, Spiritual Teacher/Coach, and Speaker as well as an Exercise Physiologist, Wellness Heart Coach, Spinning® Instructor and Founder of State of the Heart Fitness (www.stateoftheheartfitness.com).
Lisa grew up in the country in central Minnesota and ever since she was very young, she has felt most at home in the midst of nature and animals. She connected with horses when she was only five years old and immediately could feel a deep sense of peace and belongingness in their presence. During her teenage years, Lisa became aware of her intuitive abilities when she experienced an unexplainable spiritual connection with Michael Jackson, an otherworldly, heart-opening and ongoing journey she describes in her first book, Michael Jackson: The Man in Our Mirror, A Reflection of Our Collective Soul (2014).
Lisa graduated from Pepperdine University in 1993 with a degree in Sports Medicine and has worked as an Exercise Physiologist, Life/Wellness Heart Coach & Spinning® instructor ever since. In 2001, after seven years teaching at the world-renowned Pritikin Longevity Center, she founded her own business, State of the Heart Fitness, where she and her team coach people of all ages, health statuses and fitness levels in how to live their best lives with heart and from the heart.
Lisa’s caring connection with the planet as well as her natural curiosity inspired her love of travel and experiencing the world, and, more importantly, her desire to help make the world a better place. She has traveled extensively in her adult life, backpacking throughout Europe, spending three months one summer in the Greek Islands, hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in South America several times, and experiencing the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. She has also made trips to Bali, Thailand, the Philippines, and Central America. Lisa believes that there is no greater education or heart-and mind-opening opportunity than what is experienced through travel and immersion in diverse cultures. She loves creating such experiences for others by leading heart-opening wellness retreats to various parts of the world though State of the Heart Fitness.
In her lifelong quest to find a deeper meaning, purpose, and unity, Lisa has spent many years studying all aspects of spirituality, and specifically, how health and well-being manifest through the physical body via
our thoughts, beliefs and emotions. Through her studies and her personal life experience—including a shocking diagnosis of ovarian cancer in 2019 and her ongoing process of healing from it—she has come to the conclusion that our greatest challenge in life is learning to love and have a harmonious relationship with ourselves as well as our heart, mind, body and soul. She has also found that within our heart lies the Truth of all: that LOVE is who we are, and when we heal ourselves, we heal the world.
Lisa’s credits her beloved horse, Little Miss, as her greatest teacher of love and life’s timeless wisdom. When Lisa was 13, she rescued Little Miss when she was only a year old. Little did she know until several years later that not only did she rescue Miss, but that Miss was a Zen master in the form of a horse who rescued her. Little Miss took Lisa on a mystical ride of spiritual awakening that would not only teach her about the deepest love, but also guide her through her biggest challenges, including cancer.
By far the most difficult day of Lisa’s life was on May 29th, 2017 when her beloved Miss left her body to cross over Rainbow Bridge after 35 magical years. The grief and disorientation were unbearable. But Lisa soon found out that though bodies may die, love and connection never do, as Little Miss has continued to be there, showing up in so many magical ways, and guiding her from the other side. The Ride of Our Life: Lessons in Faith, Love, and Wisdom from a Magical Horse, the first book in a series of four tells the tale of their early, formative years that set the stage for so much more!
Lisa lives in Santa Monica and the Santa Ynez Valley in California. She currently coaches people to connect with and live from the passions of their heart, and she teaches online classes in movement, mindfulness and meditation. Lisa believes that life is meant to be joyful and fun, and she loves to share her childlike spirit with all who are in her life!
Katie Neligan (Foreword)
Kate Neligan is an Equine-Partnered Life/Business Coach, Healer, and Animal Communicator. Kate loves to support leaders going through personal and professional transitions with horse wisdom so they can develop stronger emotional intelligence and intuition. She created Awakening With Equines, an equine-partnered coaching certification program, as a way to bring spiritual psychology to equine coaches. Kate leads private sessions, retreats, and team buildings around the country while based near Boulder, CO. She is also a best-selling published author and TEDx speaker. www.consciousrockstar.com
Marie Plasse (editor)
Marie Plasse is Professor of English and an affiliated faculty member in Women’s and Gender Studies at Merrimack College and has also been on the faculty at Boston University. She has taught courses on Shakespeare, early modern drama, ethnic American literature, literary theory, and popular culture, including a semester-long course on Michael Jackson. Marie’s mission as a teacher is to help her students understand how the best writers invite us to see and feel what it means to be human across various time periods, places, identities, and experiences – some so different that they challenge us to see beyond ourselves, and some so familiar that they bring us the pleasure of seeing ourselves in the artist’s creation.
Marie has always been fascinated with the many ways that writers and stage performers work with the human body as a metaphor and a powerful component of live performance. Her scholarly work focuses on the human body as a literary and theatrical element in Shakespeare’s plays and a performative feature of popular culture. She has published articles on Shakespeare, Italian American women writers, and popular music and has presented her work at national and international conferences.
Marie has extensive experience teaching writing at the college level, has served as an Associate Editor for an academic journal (College Literature), and works as a freelance editor. She loves helping student and professional writers discover what they want to say and how best to say it. In her work with writers, she is always mindful of how vulnerable we all are when we share our writing and is honored to be part of that process.
In her free time, Marie loves reading, listening to music, hiking, cooking, playing guitar, connecting with friends, and being near (and boogie boarding in!) the ocean. Thanks to Lisa, Marie recently discovered her passion for Spinning® and can often be found on Spotify, searching for the best spin songs as she dreams of becoming a Spinning® instructor!
If you have a writing project in progress that you’d like to discuss, feel free to reach out to Marie at marie.plasse@comcast.net. She loves helping people get their work out into the world!
Jean-Noel Bassior (Lisa’s writing coach & original editor)
Jean-Noel Bassior is an author, creativity coach and the owner of Speaker Services, (www.SpeakerServices.com), an online speakers directory that’s been bringing speakers and audiences together for 25 years. A former journalist who specialized in celebrity profiles for magazines in the U.S. and abroad, she draws on her media experience to help authors, experts and entrepreneurs gain visibility and build their speaking careers. Jean-Noel has interviewed film stars, political figures and best-selling authors for Redbook, McCall’s, Parade, AARP The Magazine, Woman’s World, and many other publications, and her work has been syndicated worldwide by The New York Times and Knight Features (London). She’s the author of Space Patrol: Missions of Daring in the Name of Early Television, a saga of early live TV, and has been a featured guest on many talk shows, including “Coast to Coast AM” with George Noory.